


Guitar Tuner

by WhisperOfTheDay



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: (there's a lot of angst lurking beneath the surface there. just look closely), Drift Side Effects, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Ghost drift, Hermann's POV, Introspection, Lack of Sleep, Newt has a thing of his own going on..., Nightmares, Post-Canon, Self-Esteem Issues, Sleep Deprivation, Slice of Life, Uprising compliant, What else is new, brief mention of prescription drug abuse, can't blame him, discussion of traumatic experience, implied mental health issues, it's been a few weeks, leave Hermann alone with his thoughts and he gets melancholic, not the trauma induced kind, nothing graphic, set after the first movie, the title is what it is for a reason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-02 08:44:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15793062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhisperOfTheDay/pseuds/WhisperOfTheDay
Summary: Their heads ache in unison. But not all for the same reasons.(A heartfelt conversation over morning coffee. As heartfelt as it can get, all things considered.)





	Guitar Tuner

Hermann realises he's made himself coffee instead of tea only when it's already scolding his tongue. Spewing the nasty and too sugary liquid around is also not the thing he would normally do, but, being honest, his life has long stopped being normal. He can even pinpoint the precise moment when it happened. The whole world knows this date. When the reality as they knew it came tumbling down along with the Golden Gate bridge.

Now though? War is over. They've successfully protected their right for planet Earth. The goal now is to pick up the pieces, rebuild, and maintain peace as long as possible, despite the obvious fact that it never lasts.

_Human nature, right?_

Everyone tries to get accustomed to ordinary, civil living. Tries being the key word. It's hard. For some it's harder than for others. Some can't afford themselves to try yet, being constanly dragged around the world - conferences, summits, interviews, talk shows - having to relive their horrors over and over. Having to tell others how to move on instead of doing it themselves.

 

 

_"The whole operation depends on us, dude! Like, the whole world, for real now! Fate of humanity and all. We're like all those Jaeger pilots, but smarter. Huzzah! Feels good, doesn't it?!"_

_"It absolutely certainly does not, Newton. It honestly disgusts me that the world ending brings you this much excitement."_

_"It has been ending for a dozen years, man. Memento vivere."_

 

 

There are so many things about Gottlieb that changed despite his best efforts, so many people that his life once centered around- gone. Maybe not _dead_ gone, but just away, or changed beyond recognition. Or no longer need him.

Same applies for most people in this Dome. They feel adrift. Hard ground once again broke apart beneath their feet. It isn't uncommon these days for them to drop to their knees, haggard and lost.

Hermann is painfully aware that there's no way he can easily spring back to how things were, not in a span of days anyway. To tell the truth, he can hardly remember what his life was like before the war. What he was like before. Before the injury. Before Mako and Newt and the Corps. Before the Academy, before K-day.

Yes, he has had to deal with a lot of obstacles that were turning his world upside down each day for those past twelve years. It felt as if he had found himself in some sort of cruelly realistic yet way too outlandish sci-fi series. But he'd learned to stand firmly on his feet- his feet and the cane- more or less. At in the end, he had gained enough self-confidence to assume that no matter what happened next, at least he would be prepared. He would have already come to that possible outcome, would have already considered it, would have already found a solution or two.

Hell, did he ever miscalculate this badly in his entire life.

 

* * *

 

"Marshall! Wait for a second, please."

"Doctor?"

"Yes, I-" _catch your breath, speak clearly_ , "I need to discuss with you the implications of today's debriefing." 

_The one where you said all Kaiju-science specialists declined the request to be transferred to the Hong Kong Shatterdome and play part in the last attempt at actually saving humanity._

_The one where that attempt was clarified to include a 2400 pound thermonuclear warhead, 3 jaegers, 4 if they were lucky, and a plan founded on nothing else but the data given by the only PPDC scientists left._

"I believe my theory is not sound enough to be tested in the field like that, not yet," Hermann punctuated the sentence with a tap of his cane, arm swaying. He let the pause hold, then realised he could not keep eye contant any longer, same as he couldn't hold back the waterfall of words.

"I realise that we're are running out of time, and there won't be any second chances, but-"

It was _doubt_ that scared and enraged him the most throughout his life. Doubt in him, in his skills, in his methods. Doubt in himself. 

Then was that moment that it surfaced again, fiery and awfully insistent that he voiced his hesitation right there and then. This was Stacker. Aside from being his superior, it was also his old friend. The man that knew what true strength is and who would never find him weak. Probably the only one.

"I find it unwise for the human race to be dependent solely on theories and raws of numbers."

"Wasn't it always, Gottlieb?"

He kept silent. Kept his expression neutral.

Pentecost leveled him with a stern look, but his eyes were kind. 

"I'm not betting the world on you because I have no other options. I'm doing it because I know you can handle it."

To make sure Hermann realised the _you_ Marshall meant was plural, he added, with a nod and the smallest of smiles,

"Both of you." 

Nonetheless that last part slipped past Hermann. As much as he respected Newton (the man  _was,_ after all,an outstanding specialist, the best in his field of study, his books going all over the place, however that happened. ~~none of it meant Hermann had to show or in any way express his high opinion of the biologist.~~ ) and often found his company bearable, even enjoyable on rare occasions, Pentecost's statement was intended for him and him only. He'd remember it in times when he struggled to find confidence, willpower, faith. He'd draw strength from the level of trust Marshall puts in him, and he won't hesitate any more. 

His theories were in every way better and safer than Newton's. He would not have the world be dependent on a man constantly shooting into the dark, while wearing a blindfold for good measure.

Pentecost and Hansen were of same opinion apparently, when they came to hear their final report. Which had Hermann breathe out in relief.

(Little did he know the Marshall was merely trying to protect Newt from his own folly.)

Good thing the stubborn bonehead never listens.

Relatively good.

 

* * *

 

The clock in the corner of his tablet reads half past six, and he will not be going back to sleep. He'd read, but words bleed together untill it's a mess of grey and blue. Hermann blinks drowsily, it does nothing. With a sign, he lifts the glasses from his nose and leaves them hanging on his neck, eyes fixed on a point in the center of the screen, unseeing. He rubs his insistently aching right side absent-mindedly, pondering if the restlessness of the night has caused the pain to flare up, or if it was something he did yesterday. Been sloppy when bending down to reach for the small recording device that was accidentally kicked by him and nearly disappeared under a kaiju viscera tank. He felt something in his back give a dull clap, that was most likely it.

They are still the only people to reside in this lab on constant basis, any other come and go. It's only Newt the thing can belong to. And it's so like him to leave useful things lying around to be stomped at or thrown away with rubbish. _That flippant excuse of a scientist._ He'll have a pleasure lecturing his lab partner about the necessity of keeping a workplace in order next time when he actually remembers to give the recorder back to him. 

Perhaps... it could be a nice idea to record a very loud message full of insults and recollections of every time Gottlieb found a piece of kaiju or their skin parasites under his desk or on the shelves. Each time Newt argued it wasn't intentional but Hermann knew better. On some occasions it was plainly obvious Newt had set up the prank to have a good laugh. Because he did laugh his ass off afterwards, in front of an apoplectic Hermann. Then the biologist had even more fun dodging from flying pens and chalk.

Hermann doubts the message will teach Newt anything, but he sure will have a laugh of his own at Newt's reaction.

The smile lingers as Hermann keeps staring blankly into space. As his thoughts wander far and wide, it fades. 

 

* * *

 

 

**[I got your email yeah I'll look into it. hopefully theyll give me access to the archives if i ask nicely.]**

newtoNanotech is writing . . . ✏ 

 

**[an offtopic question. Can you honestly tell me you never felt even a liiitle pang of fascination looking at them? not even a smal wee bit? Never ever had your jaw drop gaping attheir enormity and beauty ?]**

 

 **[When I look at them, Dr Geiszler, I see shards of glass and naked framework of skyscrapers and crumpled pieces of Jaegers. I feel the reek of their disgusting contaminated insides hit my senses. I see that filthy blue slime mix with human blood, eating away at its chemical makeup and colour.]** \- sent

-viewed

newtoNanotech is writing . . . ✏ 

 

 

newtoNanotech is writing . . . ✏ 

**[could've just said no dude]**

 

newtoNanotech is writing . . . ✏ 

**[no need for drama :P]**

 

 

* * *

 

A bulb of pills is placed in front of him with a light thud. He only briefly everts his eyes from the device in his hand (which has long since gone into sleep mode), and before he can ask an obvious "what's that" merely out of sleep-deprived passivity, Newt answers in a quiet monotone.

"Pain meds."

The biologist turns to the kitchen table, taking a minute (or ten) to make white tea, and then crushes gracelessly into the chair on the opposite side, placing the mug in front of Gottlieb and curling his hands around the one with coffee he has dragged up to himself in return. 

After a brief moment of consideration whether he wants to have any kind of conversation right now or not, Hermann puts the device down and signs heavily, eyeing the little transparent jar with wariness.

"I don't want to accidentally get addicted to it."

Newt raises his brows and stops blowing at the already lukewarm liquid, looking extremely affronted. "Dude. That was long ago, and like, once, and I was a crazy hypochondriac teen and I got it under control. So you'll be sound."

Hermann huffs in response, clearly not convinced. If the current train of thought will seem ridiculous to him in a few minutes, he'll blame the lack of sharpness of his brain on insomnia.

"If it's any consolation, I'm pretty sure it's only our mindsets that can change, not our physiology," Newt continues sluggishly.

"I strongly disagree. Dr. Lightcap fully healed after drifting continuously with a healthy person."

Newt puffs, a silly smirk tugging at his lips. "Bad thing both of us aren't, huh? Healthy, I mean-"

"I get what you mean, Newton. Very tactful of you."

"Sorry, dude. 'T is what it is."

Hermann glares, which does nothing to the small grin on the other man's face, obviously. 

Newt lets him win the staring contest, apparently deeming his beverage more important.

A few minutes pass and Hermann is lost in thought again.

And tea tastes too much like weak coffee.

Hermann puts the mug down and places his ankles on the table, hiding his face in his hands and breathing out loudly. Uncharacteristically enough, Newton doesn't move to speak, prod, tease, just sits there sipping from his mug. Though Gottlieb can almost sense his intense, worried gaze.

The biologist's anxiety about the whole situation and their respectively changing behaviours is covered by layers of curiosity and awe, as well as by fear of the ghosts that have envaded their minds and made home there. 

All of that can't be told merely by the look on Newt's face, of course.

As much as the sceptic in Hermann is furious with the idea, he has learned to find the drift bond in a bit more organised mind of his own, has learned to navigate and separate the link, the bridge, and feel it there. He _feels_ it there. At all times.

He can cross it.

There's a tangle in the man's head, and it hurts to try to decipher it. Hermann is forcefully pushed back when he tries to, and he can't tell whether it's Newt closing off or his own subconscious system of self-preservation.

It's incredibly hard to put those sensations in words. It's all cognitive, and so very new. What they feel is barely science, and navigating the mindscape, as Newt likes to call it, just might become a skill. A useful one, because it's terribly offputing when he finds himself incapable of telling his thoughts from not his.

And yet. Hermann often turns his attention to the foreign yet human presence in his head, like tuning into the right frequency, not digging around, just listening from afar, hoping it would drive him away from intrusive thoughts. Hoping to find answers there. 

It would have been deemed too surrealistic to fathom and too unscientific to be real if he didn't have someone open-minded to the point of crazy on the other side.

"Soon enough we may as well end up communicating through mind reading," the thought gets voiced without Hermann's approval, but he has found that he no longer minded sharing personal musings so carefreely.

"Would be cool," the xenobiologist shruggs, eyes skirting around the kitchen. The crumpled room is dimly illuminated by the early morning sky, light seeping through the little window above the counter near the fridge. The clashing of waves is rhythmic, loud, seagulls' erratic cries competing with it over which sound should be the one to get through the tough concrete of the Shatterdome walls. Newt takes a long sip from his cup.

"But yeah no, I'm pretty sure it won't get any more freakish at this point."

Hermann shrugs in response, strengthening and reaching for his tea. "Sounds like wishful thinking to me," he didn't want it to come out so sour, but a quick glance up told him that the other man didn't take any offence.

Newt doesn't seem too inclined to continue this topic, nor pick a new one, so he just stares at the small square wooden table, sometimes picking at the loose splinters. He seems to be waiting for his body to awaken so that he can go busy his mind with work.

The bags under Newt's eyes remain, but the eyes themselves don't look as hazy, troubled and tired as usual.

"Sleeping pills helped," Gottlieb all but states, feeling satisfied with himself, as he was the one who researched the issue and found the (more) effective and appropriate ones, so that they didn't intervene with his drift partner's other medication. 

"Mhm. You though don't look like someone who got a decent night's sleep."

".. My old ones just aren't strong enough, it appears."

The vague impression of guilt courses through Hermann, and he looks up at Newt, who quickly casts his eyes downwards. The feeling is battled and compressed and overpowered completely within a minute, because _we talked about this. We've made a deal._

_No one's at blame._

"Just, don't think 'bout those.. images.. as memories," Newt is looking at him again, voice vibrant as usual, only if a little less loud. "Just parts of a freaky weird horror movie filmed through the first person's point of view. You watched it at night, alone, and it scared the hell out of you and now ya can't get rid of these images."

"Then it's a scary movie keeping me from sleeping healthy hours, and as a result- from functioning productivity. The fact remains, I'm not as useful as I was before."

The stunned pause doesn't last long.

"Hermann. Buddy. You gotta stop seing yourself as some kind of tool. You ain't a computer program to function, without ever catching a break," he bends down, trying to find his drift-partner's eyes, sounding firm, resolute. "War's over. It's just- it's over. There's that."

Gottlieb is too entangled in his own latent yet ever-present unease to register an abrupt shift in Newt's eyes, as if a shadow passes over him, making him shrink back in his seat quietly.

Hermann signs, hands dropping on the table sluggishly. His fingers find the edge of the tablet's worn out protective case and scratch at it apathetically, a previously annoying picularity of Newt's he unintentionally picked up. 

"Old habits die hard, I presume," he mumbles, glancing up briefly, pulling a quick half-hearted smile, which gradually gives way to that so common vacant stare both of them are painfully familiar with.

They sit in silence for a minute or two, staring into space. Then Newt slightly jerks as he surfaces from the all-consuming waters of his thoughts and tells Hermann to drink his tea before mold grew on it. 

Gottlieb is considering going back to reading the article featuring the interview he gave two days prior when Newt speaks, voice unsteady in pitch as he babbles.

"Do you have, you know, moments when you get lost in thought, you know, and like, forget where you are and just fall out of reality?" 

"There's a term for that state. Dissociation." Hermann narrows his eyes, "Why do you ask? You're experiencing it again?"

"No, no, I just... Well, yes, but-"

"You think it's a Drift sideeffect."

"No! No, no. No. I mean yes, maybe, but it's all me! I'm.. it's all me. I mean- it's my deal, you know, the usual freaky me. I just.. just asking if you maybe.. get this? from me," he gestures clumsily and expressively as usual, the drowsiness gone, replaced with restlessness. "You know, the way we.. exchanged.. other things."

"You mean like the pain in your spine that wakes you up every morning?"

"That's not what wakes me up usually."

"What's on your mind Newton?" he tries his hardest to sound kind and friendly, he really does.

"Nothing aside from what you already know," Newt blurts out. His hands have dropped to his lap, most likely fidgeting, and he looks Hermann dead in the eye, unblinking. He's put up defences, and Hermann is not in the mood to push.

"To answer your question- no, I don't dissociate. Haven't been yet. Sometimes I get flashes, memories swing by," _both our memories, as well as theirs_ , "they replace my vision for a split second. I believe it to be the display of acute stress disorder. After a nightmare induced night it might be hard to come back to my senses, but I know where I am and what is happening."

Newt's expression relaxes, even brightens, he suppresses a smile. Yet he still seems troubled and a second later, must likely rushing to prevent Hermann from asking anything, he says, "Do you regret it?" 

Considering the topic of their conversation, there is no need to elaborate, yet Newt does nonetheless.

"The drift. I mean, drifting. I mean, the whole.. The whole thing," he stops his nervous blabbering, jaws slamming shut with an audible clunk. 

Hermann can't help a disapproving frown. His tone is one of a scolding teacher, which is preposterous.

"There can be no talking about regrets. The world was ending and it would have ended for sure had we not done what we did, and _you know_ that."

"I do, but-," he makes a sound akin to a long complaining whine and slides his hands on the table, dropping his head upon them. The bouncing of Newt's leg under the table rattles his frame and cuts the muffled childish sounds. Coffee kicked in. 

Hermann might end it at that, slap Newt on the shoulder in a supportive gesture and propmt they go do their respective jobs. But against his better judgment he continues.

"Do I find myself wishing we didn't have to go through this? Yes. Often. But looking back- living in the past? It is pointless, unhealthy and counterproductive. I'm sure moving forward is a better option," he talks in cliche phrases but that is the best his abused mind can come up with right now.

He highly doubts it'll be enough to convince Newt that they will be okay.

"Mhm. You're right. _Obviously._ Jeez, can't believe I just said that," Newt huffs a laugh as he gets up, drinking the rest of the coffee in one gulp and turning around to wash the cup.

Hermann signs.

Of course it won't be enough.

He should try convincing himself first.

**Author's Note:**

> Yall probably know what's up with Newt. Problem is, he doesn't, not yet. But he will realise soon enough. T---T
> 
> (If you don't get something, it's alright. Messed up stuff is going on in both their heads. It'll (probably) be clarified in other drabbles.)
> 
> I started writing this one-shot before PRU, but now it may or may not mark the beginning of my little pacrim fic collection/series focusing on that God awful 10-year gap and maybe a bit of the aftermath, a truly wild ride. We'll see how it goes. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! I genuinely appreciate any piece of feedback and respond to every comment, albeit often a bit indecipherably (like mashing on the keyboard while screaming internally). Don't hesitate to tell me what you think about the whole thing, not only the fic, but canon and headcanons as well. I'm always up for a ramble about my favourite K-sci boys!! My tumblr- idontbelieveinfear
> 
> (The latin phrase means 'Remember to live')


End file.
